


where poison's welcome

by FSTP



Category: Dead by Daylight (Video Game)
Genre: Baseless Headcanons, Blood and Gore, Canon-Typical Violence, Explicit Language, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-07
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 12:29:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29901114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FSTP/pseuds/FSTP
Summary: A collection of shorter pieces and scenes that didn't hold up as stand-alone works.Characters and NSFW content are listed in the chapter titles; individual warnings are in each chapter.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 20





	1. Trapper, Wraith

**Author's Note:**

> In the interest of not eventually having a six-inch tag cloud, general warnings are listed as tags and individual chapter-specific warnings will be in the notes of each chapter. For that reason, **heed the notes for each individual part.** Sexually explicit content will be marked NSFW in the chapter title. 
> 
> Warnings for this chapter: Fighting, violence, discussions of murder (familial and otherwise).

The fight started the same way a lot of them did: Evan in a bad mood, and Philip with one comment that went too far. 

The wrecking yard was, fortunately, wrecked, so it wasn’t as if they were destroying anything worthwhile. The two of them left a trail of bent metal and broken glass, torn ground and blood that gleamed in the sickly moonlight coming down from above. 

It was mostly Evan doing the bleeding, but Philip had his fair share of wounds. Deeper, more dangerous, but nonetheless fewer, and that was its own kind of insult. 

Evan grabbed half a car and hurled it at Philip, who ducked out of the way easily only to have to lunge back to avoid the oncoming cleaver blow. It missed him by inches, slammed into the front of a broken-down school bus and sent metal fragments flying. 

“You don’t,” Evan snarled, wrenching his cleaver free, “say anything about my mother. _Ever._ ” 

“If I’d known it was such a sensitive subject, I might not have.” But the tone of voice said otherwise, even if it was a tone Evan was hearing echoed exclusively in the confines of his own head. 

“It’s not sensitive.” Metal fragments littered the path in front of him, glinting until moonshadows cast them back into darkness. “It’s personal. Shit you couldn’t know. Don’t pretend you do.” 

“Really.” And _that_ was sardonic, not just to Evan’s ears. “I think I can make a guess.” 

“You want this in your neck?” He lifted the cleaver, all its scars and nicks proving that it had been through a lot more than just flesh. 

“You haven’t gotten it there yet.” Philip’s head tilted, but the rest of him stayed at the ready, the skull at the end of his club looking no better for the fresh spray of Evan’s blood on it. “Is your father as offensive a subject to talk about?” 

“Yes.” Evan took a heavy step forward. Ready to lunge. Ready to kill. “You say a bad word about him, you’ll fit into this.” The cleaver smashed into a stack of crushed cars, where the only way to make something fit would be to liquefy it. “I loved my father.” 

“Then why did you kill him?” 

It was like a bullet to the chest; six words, shot with no more venom than usual, stopping him in his tracks. All the rage froze. Philip didn’t move, and as the haze above passed over the moon the dimmed light hid his blank expression in new shadows. 

Evan stared, and tried to find a response. 

“I didn’t kill my - ” 

“I can see him standing behind you.” 

Something cold bloomed in the heart of the rage, like frost on a lake. Small, fragile for now, but spreading slowly through every inch of him. 

Philip’s expression was as flat as ever, no hint of emotion in his eyes and no fraction of a second of a pull at his mouth to say whether he might have been amused or disgusted. He could see their ghosts - the bloodied and mutilated shades that had helped to drag each one of them into the Entity’s grasp - but unless they told him their stories, he couldn’t know who they were or what they meant. Only - 

“You look like him,” he said, dry and cool. “More than you liked, I suspect.” 

A prickling sensation crawled up the back of Evan’s neck. Not hot, not cold. Just there, moving up onto his scalp and spreading out. 

“He’s a very thin man. Not much blood. Not like the others.” Philip’s head tilted the other way, and despite the easy target he made Evan couldn’t move. “He’s watching you. Looking at you with … hate. Fury. Anger like I see in you. Fear, so great it can’t be overcome by the anger. And … ” 

There was a long, long moment of hesitation. The whole world felt like it was creaking around him. 

“ … pride.” 

Evan whipped around so fast he left a mark in the dirt underfoot. 

There was nothing there. Nothing but the endless sea of broken cars and crushed metal, flaming barrels and distant neon lights, the fog drifting up wherever it could, hiding the distant wall in a greenish haze. 

He stared into it for longer than he should have, feeling the rage inside him drain away like melting ice and then surge back up like molten lava, swallowing everything that might have been weak and burning it up again, turning it to ash to settle and grow back again later. 

With a sound like some rabid wild animal he hurled an entire hollowed car out of his way and stormed off, sending the mist swirling as he went. Fire was raging in his brain; he needed to cool down. Needed to get space. Needed to do anything but _think_. Or worse - remember. 

Philip watched him go in a cold, almost pitying silence.


	2. Wraith, Twins, Huntress

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Mentions of violence and murder

Rumors reached Philip about a child wandering in the fog. 

He was one of the few who actually put in the effort to communicate with the others. Part of that was out of an urge to keep them all on the same page, in case something like the blight serum ever came back around; part was out of an urge to know what the hell was going on, and sometimes to be the only one who knew what was going on. And part of it was just because he couldn’t stay in his own pocket of the realm all the time, where the ghosts of his past crawled after him and clung to his heels like second shadows. 

So when Kazan said he’d seen something picking through the crumbling temple gardens he called home and, on chasing it, discovered it wasn’t a survivor but instead someone young and bloody and fast and _noisy_ , Philip nearly felt a flicker of curiosity. 

“Did you kill them?” he asked. 

“No,” was the response, short and sharp and clearly unhappy about the fact. “It fought back and then ran. Disgraceful and cowardly.” 

“A child generally would be afraid of someone like you.” 

“It should have stood fast and died a worthwhile death.” The twisted, angry mask turned to look at him. The real expression was hidden, but somehow, Philip got the feeling it would look a lot like the mask anyway. “Even children can have a strong will.” 

He didn’t argue that fact, knowing that pointing out even adults were unlikely to stand still and let themselves die, much less children, would only get him gutted or decapitated. Kazan held a fragile respect for him, since he himself had stood fast and let the man almost cut him in half during his initial ‘trespass’ on the temple, and at the moment he wasn’t willing to risk shattering it. 

After that, he heard from Amanda that someone had been eating the dead pigs in her meat plant. She’d only seen a shadow, but she’d heard screaming - high-pitched wailing that cut itself short as soon as the source reached the freezer. 

“Rotting pigs?” he asked, feeling himself almost get nauseous for the first time since arriving in the fog. 

“Those ones aren’t as bad. But, yes.” She pointed to one of the T.V. screens nearby, where the whole meat plant was under constant surveillance. It was paused on a frame, showing a strange, almost hunched figure in the freezer, their hands buried in one of the pigs. The image was grainy black-and-white, the details vague, but the height of the figure was clearly too short to be fully grown. “Can’t see much here, but I know what I heard.” 

“Screaming.” 

“It sounded more like a baby crying.” She leaned away from the array of screens. “A demon baby, anyway.” 

Herman said he saw a girl circling the Institute without going inside. Evan said he followed some kind of wailing and found a busted bear trap, so badly bent out of shape it had to have been done with a weapon, not anyone’s bare hands. At the farm Max hadn’t seen anything, but the man known possibly too accurately as Leatherface claimed someone had been stealing from the constantly-bubbling pot he’d set up in the destroyed farmhouse’s kitchen. 

The pieces added up in strange ways. A baby’s unholy crying, a short figure, stealing food instead of possessions, being afraid of a strange place - they said a child. The strength to dismantle a trap, and to rip apart a frozen pig, said a killer. But why would a child that young be taken into the fog? Even Legion were at least on the cusp of adulthood. 

It was Adiris, eventually, who gave him the answers he was looking for. Rumors didn’t filter down to her - she wasn’t interested in talking to many people aside from him and Anna, who shared a realm with her - but she’d actually _seen_ what was new in the perpetual gray cold of the fog. 

“She is not a child,” she said, and that as a response to _have you seen a child around here lately?_ threw him off. 

“You know who it is.” 

“I know of her.” Sweet smoke drifted up to the high ceiling above them. “I saw her while I was praying. She stood at the mouth of the temple. Looked to my altar, and then looked to me. And then … she ran.” 

Adiris lifted her incense burner and murmured against her clasped hands. Philip waited until she was finished to speak. 

“Others heard a baby crying.” 

“I would have said screaming.” 

“So … she _is_ a child?” 

“No. A child is with her.” 

_That_ made him stare at her, more intently than his usual look. 

“The Entity brought a woman with a _child_ into this place?” 

In that instant he remembered that Adiris saw their dangerous benefactor as a god in line with the one she’d once served, and that any criticism was met with instant violence, but she only looked up into the ceiling above and let the incense drift past her. 

“Seek her out and you will understand.” 

“You know where she is?” 

“With Anna,” was the response. 

It wasn’t a long walk from the temple to the heavy forest. It wasn’t on him to doubt the actions of the Entity, or question its plans, or fight against it in any significant way, but a part of him refused to believe even something as thoughtless and monstrous as a creature so powerful it may as well have been a god would drag a woman with a newborn child into the realm, whether to kill or be killed. It made him uneasy. 

In some ways, the answer he got was a relief; in others, it gave him a whole new reason to be uneasy. 

She was crouched by the little hut where Anna had, back in the world, smoked meat. That was still what happened here, but the animals never really cooked properly, and when they were taken down they just reappeared later. He approached, fully visible, and she turned sharply to look at him, the basket on her back swinging hard. 

She was scowling, glaring, hunched down like she was trying to hide. One hand clutched a weapon. The other was clutching at her chest. 

Except, he realized, it wasn’t her chest. It was a child. 

A long look revealed that it was a child _in_ her chest. 

It looked like a baby, too small and malformed to be anything else, but it was looking at him with an expression a baby couldn’t possibly have had: almost a glower, mouth set in a snarl. _That_ was what eventually started to howl and wail, even as the girl clutched it more tightly to her body. 

Carefully, he backed off. The sound died down, replaced by a growling that sounded half-human. He stared for a long while until Anna appeared from out of the fog. 

She gave him a look before turning to the child - to the children - and saying something he couldn’t quite hear. The girl slowly stood up and, after giving him a long look, crept into the smoking hut. Only once she was inside did Anna make her way over to Philip, who wasn’t entirely sure how to start his questions. 

“They’re twins,” she said, sparing him the effort, and he turned to look at the doorway of the shack again. 

“I can’t imagine they were born separately.” 

“Stranger things have happened.” Anna shrugged one shoulder and turned to watch the doorway with him. “I found them stealing food. Fought them until I realized they were starving. Even in a place like this.” 

“Old habits linger. They won’t be, in time.” 

“Maybe.” 

“So the Entity _has_ brought children into this place?” 

Anna considered the question, which was unusual. Just inside the doorway he could see the shadow of the child - the children, hacking pieces off the dead animals. 

“She said she was older. Nearly twenty. So is he.” 

“They don’t look it.” 

“Starvation and fear stunt growth.” She drummed her fingers on the handle of her axe. “Though he may never have grown at all.” 

“What have they told you?” 

“They were orphans. Fleeing those who would kill them for being what they are. She said he led her here, into the fog.” 

And now … he watched their shadows move in the smoke and flames, but they stayed resolutely inside the shack, unwilling to come out while he was there. 

“Have they killed yet?” he asked. 

“Yes.” 

Uncertainty and a strange sense of intrigue left him wanting to ask more questions, but Anna only knew so much, and _they_ weren’t going to talk to him just yet, so against his better judgment he went to see someone that might know more. 

Herman wasn’t a traditional doctor by any means, but he’d studied human bodies time and again and knew at least something about the way they could grow. 

“Two embryos generally don’t fuse in the womb,” he said while stitching up a rip in his jacket. “The current theory is that a single zygote that might form twins fails to fully split during development. This results in what’s known as Siamese, or conjoined, twins at birth.” 

Philip watched him work in silence, knowing there was more to come. 

“Traditionally, they’re joined at a point in the body - the skull, the spine, the pelvis … occasionally you get two heads on one body. You said there was one full body and another smaller one growing out of the first one’s chest?” 

“Yes.” 

“That sounds more like parasitism to me.” He glanced at Philip, whose expression was as unchanged as ever. “Parasitic twins. The smaller one almost certainly depends on the larger one to survive. Conjoined twins are rare enough as they are, but that level of parasitism is even more unusual.” 

He paused and examined his work. The rip was nearly sewn up, and the blood splatter around it looked more like the result of a stab than a slash as far as Philip could tell. Probably another fight with Evan. 

“I don’t suppose you could convince Anna to let me examine them?” 

“Convince her yourself.” 

Anna had taken on an almost motherly role to the two. Like she did with Legion, but moreso, because unlike most of them they hadn’t come with a place to call home. They lingered in her forest, learning slowly that the indoors wasn’t necessarily a danger. Of course, if Herman got anywhere near them, that lesson was likely to slam to a halt. 

And, like she did with Legion, she took to any unwarranted threats to them as a direct assault, and returned them twice over. 

“I suppose I could always say it’s in their best interests. A young woman can’t want her brother always around, after all.” 

“I’m sure she’ll understand,” Philip said, just dryly enough to be heard. 

Of course, he thought as he headed back into the endless gray of the fog, Herman would be surprised to find out that the conjoined aspect was no longer mostly a problem. Anna claimed they could separate - that the smaller boy could pull himself free from his sister’s chest and run on his own. And grab. And hang on. And scream. 

Back in the forest he found that was the case - the girl was sitting on the ground, watching as her brother raced back and forth through the trees. He didn’t sound like any child Philip had ever heard - more like an animal. Snarling and growling, his screeches as he lunged through the air like something out of a nightmare. He didn’t say words, and maybe he couldn’t, but he could make demands all the same - and threats, in a certain way. 

He stayed far enough away that neither of them would think he was a threat, but didn’t hide himself. There wasn’t much of a reason to do it outside a trial, and he didn’t want Anna to think he was trespassing deliberately - or trying to hide something. 

She found him not too long after his arrival and watched the two with him in silence for some time. 

“Herman wants to examine them,” he said eventually. She snarled. 

“He can _try._ ” 

“I thought you’d feel that way.” The boy raced toward a huge tree and hurled himself off the ground at it, slamming into the trunk and scrabbling to hold on as he slid down. 

“If he wishes to dissect something, he can find stray meat.” They watched the pair for a few seconds longer before she kept going. “Do you still see our dead?” 

“Yes,” he said, almost automatically; that was a gift he knew he’d never be able to shed, no matter how much he wanted to. 

“Do you see much following them?” 

Philip looked at the girl sitting on the forest floor. 

The Entity had gifted him the unsettling ability to see the spirits of the murdered in this place - those that he and his fellow killers had stolen the life from, the results of the actions that condemned them to this place. Maybe it was because he’d always been watching and listening for something out there to explain the worst parts of the world to him. Maybe it was because he knew this was a punishment, not a gift. And maybe it was because he’d always been more sensitive to the second world, even back before. 

It gave him guilt, and grief, and knowledge, and with that knowledge came leverage. To know what the others had done, whose blood had helped pave the path to lead them to the Entity’s grasp, gave him a sort of power nobody else had. 

He could see ghosts behind the girl when he focused. Strangers lingering not far from her, covered in bloody slashes, some decapitated, some just slaughtered. They looked sullen and afraid. Some looked burned. Others had their heads caved in. 

And on her chest, in the place where her brother normally hung out of but now was an empty gouge, was a silvery ghost of the same child that was running around, stuck in place, hands clinging to her shredded clothes, looking between her face and the copy of itself hurtling between the trees. 

Philip stared at it for a long while before he spoke. 

“Some,” he said. “Too many for someone her age. Fewer than you might expect.” 

“Nothing interesting?” 

The ghost of her brother turned to look at him. The eyes were - different. 

“No.” The depthless white of his eyes stared back until the ghost boy turned away again. “Not really.”


	3. Trickster, Doctor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Mentions of violence, discussions about torture, psychopaths mutually encouraging each other’s bullshit

The Fog was … bigger than he expected it to be. 

For something that seemed so oppressive and claustrophobic it went on _forever_ , leading him down strange paths that led to even stranger places. He could hear things as he wandered through it, the cold damp prickling on his bare chest, listening to every sound in case it seemed worth following - and _feeling_ things, too, in a way only torture had ever resonated in him before. Strange things, and strange smells and tastes that were only there for a second, more fleeting than raindrops, than bloodspray. 

Sometimes the endless gray parted and he was somewhere new. A cold, rainy forest, hemmed in by endless heavy trees. A farm with corn sprawling in every direction, the rust-colored horizon broken up by broken-down buildings. A snowy treeline that broke into a snowy clearing, the one huge building looming overhead. It was all so new, so _interesting_ , but he didn’t stop to look too closely; he was still unfamiliar with the whole place, and didn’t want to make the wrong first impression on anybody he ran into. 

Because they were out there. He could almost sense them. Strange silhouettes in the distance, not watching him but maybe following him anyway. Stealth had never in his life been a skill he needed to hone; it wasn’t necessary when a friendly smile or enough money could get people to turn their backs to whatever he was doing. 

So he didn’t linger, and kept moving. He figured that eventually he’d be found, or get stuck somewhere for a while, because he’d stalked from his magnum opus into darkness and coiling fog and ever since then hadn’t been able to find somewhere familiar. 

In the end, he got stuck. 

The fog cleared and didn’t come back, leaving him in the snowy cold outside a looming building. It _almost_ looked like a hospital, but one that had been so ravaged by time and chaos it was on the verge of falling apart. Then again, what place _didn’t_ look like that around here? So far only one or two spots had looked even remotely held together, and they’d felt like some of the most unfriendly. 

Tugging his coat a little tighter around him to fend off the cold, Ji-Woon made his way into the building. 

He could smell blood right away. Old blood, obviously. And electricity in the air, the bright tang of it almost as sharp as metal. Which was strange, because the whole place was as dark as the others, every overhead light blown out and the whole place only lit by moonlight coming through sealed-shut or broken windows. Something worked around here. Where was it? 

There were hospital beds shoved against walls, gurneys left to rot, shower stalls molding and moldering but kept from really stinking thanks to the cold. There were no doors, only doorways. No windows, only empty holes in the walls. He hadn’t seen this place before, but his limited experience told him he _would_ see it again; he tried to remember the layout, then gave up. There was more than enough space to throw a knife around here. 

The smell and sound of electricity got stronger the closer he got to the center of the place. There was light, too, coming from somewhere. Above and below all at once. Some piercing white, some hellish orange. He followed it, and heard … noise. 

That was all he could call it. Noise. Not just sound, but chaos, and it lured him to the center of the building like a moth headed for a blast furnace. Ji-Woon stepped into a circular room, ringed by open doorways and bizarre machines. His shoes rang on the metal grate that served as flooring; the light coming from somewhere underneath cast his shadow strangely on the walls. But he was too busy staring upward to notice. 

A mechanical mess of televisions hung overhead. Pointed in every direction, making sure anyone standing anywhere could see what was playing on them, and what was playing was absolutely bizarre. Flashing lights and images. A smile, or maybe a grimace. Staring eyes, or flayed ones? They flashed too fast, all in black and white and gray, layered by static, dragged by like they were on a film reel instead of a video. He thought he saw dead people, or at least dying ones. 

It was the source of the noise. Grinding, guttural sounds. Metallic. Rumbling. Voices filtered and distorted so the words were unintelligible but still carried a terrible, dread-inducing meaning. Screams snapped and stuttered between and through the distortion. The screens shifted and rotated with a tortured scream of metal as gears and bars ground against each other. He watched unseeing and _listened_ , hearing a pulse underneath it that he wasn’t certain anyone else had ever heard or ever would. A beat. A rhythm. Something he could use, something to bind to the bottom layer of a track, something to spark a new light in the head of every listener and drive them into a frenzy … 

It didn't quite seem complete, though. 

He was very much aware of someone approaching behind him, but he didn’t move from his spot, still too enthralled by the sight and sound above him to care much. The footsteps were light, even on the grate, and the breathing was a quick hiss. There was _pressure_ at his back, the kind that would have sent a lesser man running. 

When it stopped, he turned. 

Years of training had taught him never to flinch or recoil or change his expression even when dealing with the most unusual, ugliest, or downright _strangest_ of sights, so he didn’t actually step back when he saw the man behind him, but it was a near thing. 

Ji-Woon looked into a flayed face pulled into a rictus grin and permanent stare by metal bands and wires and smiled a bright, brilliant smile. 

“This is incredible,” he said, pointing up toward the mess of televisions overhead. “Is it yours? I’d love to see how you put it together.” 

The man in front of him gave him a long stare - could he do anything else with a face like that, Ji-Woon wondered? - and then he laughed, a strange little chuckle that sounded like it was coming from two voices at once. 

“The mechanical setup or the video tracks?” he asked, in the same split voice, leaning in to loom with an unnatural height. Ji-Woon didn’t so much as tilt his head back. 

“The video tracks. The audio in particular. It’s so distorted - I can only guess at how you did that.” His smile quirked up a notch, showing a flash of teeth. “It needs more screams, though.” 

The man smiled wider, if that was even possible. His constantly staring eyes bored down into Ji-Woon’s own. 

“I agree entirely,” he said. Electricity sparked off the metal on his head, drawing Ji-Woon’s attention briefly. “Any thoughts on how to add that?” 

A threat was a threat even when it wasn’t obvious, and Ji-Woon cocked his head at it, toward the way he’d come in. His smile never flickered. 

“Find a lost little stray and see just how loud they can get?” he asked, mostly rhetorically. He flexed his fingers, the tension running up to his wrist. 

“I think,” said the strange man, taking a step closer, “that I’ve already found that.” 

He took one more step and stopped abruptly. Ji-Woon had casually raised a hand. Two blades, thin and glowing, were pressed up against his stomach, the edges razor-sharp and slick as ice and already starting to cut through the thick layer of his coat. 

The sounds coming down from above filled the silence between them. Electricity arced off the man’s body and into the floor. That kind of thing _would_ run through his knives and electrocute him, he knew, but the moment of surprise was all he needed to take control here. 

“Not really,” he said, as casually as if he was dismissing someone’s concerns over a questionable fashion choice he’d made. “But I’m sure if we work together we can find someone that can really add to that track.” 

There was a long pause, and then a very slight shift on the rictus face - almost like surprise, or maybe delight. 

“Oh, you’re _new_ , aren’t you?” The man eased himself back, away from the accusing point of the knives, which Ji-Woon didn’t lower. “You look just like one of the subjects. I couldn’t help but assume.” 

“What, even with all the blood?” 

“They’re usually drenched in it.” There was another odd split-voice laugh. “Even when I get my hands on them. It’s nice to meet you. Why don’t you step into my office?” 

* * *

  
The man’s name was Herman Carter. _Doctor_ Herman Carter, Ph.D., psychiatry and neuroscience. One of the directors at Lery’s Memorial Institute, an agent of the American government, and a researcher in the field of torture and interrogation methodology, once paid very handsomely to learn how to get information out of sealed heads and now just interested in getting those heads open. 

His office was just off the center treatment theater. In contrast to the rest of the place, it was bright and warmly-lit, carpeted, and reasonably clean. The doctor sat himself in a leather chair on one side of a not-exactly-pristine desk and failed to offer Ji-Woon anywhere to sit, so he helped himself to the desk itself, perching on one corner with ease. Surprisingly, there were no immediate repercussions. 

“So you’re a professional torturer?” he asked, looking around at the high bookshelves and strange art hanging on the walls. 

“In essence,” said the doctor, opening a desk drawer and pulling out a well-worn but mostly cared-for textbook. “The short-sighted goal of the Institute was just to get information. War can blind all but the most softhearted eyes, so they never questioned my methodology as long as I gave them what they wanted. It allowed me to do whatever I needed to reach my own personal goals.” 

“Which were … ?” Ji-Woon glanced back at Herman, but he was busy paging through the book. It was mostly text, with the occasional diagram. Most of them looked like they’d been drawn on, or over, or in some cases blacked out completely, heavy pen marks scribbled over neat printing. 

“The full and total control of the mind.” He laid the book open, flat on the table, the pages falling open easily. He must have opened it to that place a thousand times. One side was words; the other was a diagram of the human brain. 

There was writing scrawled all over the page without the diagram. 

“And did you end up getting that?” 

“Not at all. But given everything else I learned, that was hardly a loss.” He hissed out a strange sort of breath, and after a second Ji-Woon realized he was laughing again, this time without his voice. “I know the limits of human pain.” 

“Me too.” 

Herman glanced at him, or at least turned his head in Ji-Woon’s direction. There was no way for that expression to really change, but he knew when people were doubting him. 

“Is that so?” 

“Well … maybe not the limits.” He smiled at the memories. “I got carried away most of the time. I wanted to hear them scream, really, and why hold back just to drag it out a little more?” 

“For the sheer pleasure of it?” 

“Not at all. I make use of it. _Made_ use of it. In my music.” 

“A musician, hm?” He could hear the derision in Herman’s voice, and diplomatically chose to ignore it. “I can’t say I don’t see the connection between the two, but it seems a little wasteful. You could be using your work for research.” 

“I did. Research into what made the best sounds. A blade splitting a tendon, for instance, makes a person go right through a full scale. Low A to high. And that’s if you just go straight from one side to the other. Start sawing at it, and they go all over the place.” 

“And how exactly did you use that in your music?” 

“Sampling a clip in a track is normal. Even screaming is pretty usual.” That wasn’t exactly true, but he knew he’d had copycats - and entire copy corporations, in some cases - at the peak of his popularity. “Maybe not exactly the way I did it, though. Either interspersed in the song, or as part of the opening to set the tone, autotuned behind the lyrics, or if I felt like being a little daring, hiding it unaltered under the song so you can only hear it if you know what you’re looking for.” 

The look he was getting was indecipherable, but the brief silence told him there was still judgment in the air. He let his smile widen a little. 

“There’s no sweeter sound than people in agony, and I wanted to make sure my music was the _best_.” 

“People heard it?” 

“Worldwide.” 

“And nobody ever caught on?” 

“If they did, nobody else was listening.” 

Ji-Woon’s almost-smirk met Herman’s pulled grin. 

“Fascinating. I think we might almost be kindred spirits.” 

“Only almost?” 

“I was still doing something worthwhile with my end product.” Ji-Woon’s smile faltered a little, his eyes narrowing, but Herman didn’t seem to notice. “Even after I stopped sending reports. All my research is stored in this room, and in my head, and it still has a use here.” 

“Really? Can I have a look?” 

“I might let you someday.” There was another laugh. “Only what’s in this room, of course. You won’t be getting into my head.” 

“I might,” he said, almost sweetly, and got yet another laugh for it. 

“You’re welcome to try.” Herman ran a hand almost lovingly over the diagram of the brain in front of him. “All the work I did here is a testament to my intellect and abilities. I remember the work I did in every room. All the most successful procedures, and the ones with the most explosive results.” 

“This was where you did all your work?” 

“Of course. That’s why it came here with me. I could hardly be deprived of it.” He looked at Ji-Woon, whose expression had settled somewhat. “I assume you have somewhere of your own.” 

It wasn’t phrased like a question, but Ji-Woon heard the delicate inquiry. 

“If there is, I haven’t found it,” he said with a shrug. “One moment I was finishing my work, and the next … nothing but darkness.” 

“Really.” He watched out of the corner of his eye as Herman pulled out another book, this one a notebook battered and ragged, filled with scrawled, frantic handwriting he wasn’t sure he could have read if he’d looked at it right-side up, much less upside-down as it was. “No home territory … no property of your own. Unfortunate for you. Though you’re hardly the only one.” 

“I would have liked my recording studio. Or even a soundstage, a real stage … anything. Think it might still be out there?” 

“I doubt it. Have you had any trials yet?” 

“A few.” 

“Then if you didn’t end up there afterward, you don’t have it.” There was no real way to discern a change in expression, but he _heard_ the fake sympathy as it came out. “Too bad for you.” 

He kept up his smile, the same as he always had, and set his hands flat on the desk behind him and tilted his head back. Closing his eyes, he slowed his breathing and listened, hearing the crackle of electricity, Herman’s breathing, the distant creaking of broken windows and clanking of the metal nightmare in the treatment theater - and the faint, distant screaming seeping out of the walls. 

For everyone else, it was probably a nightmare come to life: a place so scarred and haunted by what had happened that even the inanimate pieces of it couldn’t keep all the horrors locked away. 

Ji-Woon opened his eyes and turned his smile to Herman, all perfectly friendly again, the new yellow of his eyes glowing like molten metal. 

“Mind if I stay here for a while?” he asked.


End file.
